2005 Best in Category: Kitchenware & Barware

Snap-Saver

Snap-Saver No Brainer Container

An idea that was hatched in the kitchen of a San Diego home nearly a decade ago is now on the shelves of a handful of well-known retailers and is the recipient of the Best In Category Award in Countertop Kitchenware in the 2005 Housewares Design Awards.

But the path to developing Snap-Saver, a line of plastic kitchen storage that allows the lid to attach to the underside of its proper bowl— designed to eliminate misplaced lids— was lined with challenges for Kate Adams, the Southern California woman who developed the storage containters but had no prior experience with product development, said Roy Gayhart, president of Snap-Saver.

“When I met Kate, she had this great concept for a product but was unfamiliar with how to get the item developed,” Gayhart recalled.

The biggest challenge facing the Snap-Saver team took place during the product development stage. “Obviously, we needed to get the main feature of Snap-Saver to work,” he said. “We naively thought it would work on the first shot, but didn’t. We had to go back to the drawing board a few times before it actually worked.

“Since something like this had not been done, we needed to figure a way to make the lids snap tightly to the top of the bowl when storing food, but also adhere properly to the bottom of the bowl for proper stacking when not in use,” he said.

Besides the functional aspects of Snap-Saver, Gayhart said the company was also focused on making a product that would be a step-up from spate of low-priced food storage items on the market. “It was always our intention to compete to solve a problem. We did not want to compete with the lowest-priced product on the shelves,” he added.

The final product was developed just prior to the 2004 International Home & Housewares Show, where Snap-Saver officially debuted. “While we had the final version of the product, we had no appointments with retailers. We simply stood at the booth for three days demonstrating the product,” Gayhart said.

But affirmation for the idea behind Snap-Saver came before any retail buyer was able to get a look at the new product. Just prior to the 2004 Housewares Show, “The Wall St. Journal” ran an article that featured the newspaper’s top new product selections from the show. It included Snap-Saver.

“That was a confirming moment for us,” Gayhart recalled.

Since its debut, Snap-Saver had gained placement at several key retail chains, including Wegmans, Organized Living and Boscov’s. The company is in on-going discussions with several national retail chains.

And because of the company’s inexperience with retail packaging, retailers also played a key role in designing packaging for Snap-Saver. The company sent several packaging ideas to buyers, and it received input from many who critiqued the designs and offered suggestions. “The look of our packaging today is the result of that input,” he added.